Militant Islamist fighters gesture as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province June 30, 2014. The fighters held the parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic "caliphate" after the group captured territory in neighbouring Iraq, a monitoring service said. The Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot previously known as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), posted pictures online on Sunday of people waving black flags from cars and holding guns in the air, the SITE monitoring service said. Picture taken June 30, 2014.

Analysis: Is Iraq's Sunni-Shiite Conflict Really About Religion?

By Jim Maceda

News Analysis

As shocking as the video clips of Sunni militants mowing down Shiites in Iraq with AK-47s and then handing out Qurans can be, the barbarity is not new nor unique to the Muslim world.

This extreme violence that is gripping Iraq is largely being cast as a religious war – in this case pitting Sunni against Shiite Muslim extremists. But if history is any indication, painting it as a bloody crisis of Islam misses the point.

Militants under the black banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) proclaim they are fighting in the name of Allah. Their stated cause – to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state – only reinforces the sense of a battle royal between two brands of a single religion. But, through the centuries and continents, from Europe to the Middle East and beyond, religious conflicts evolved into battles over power and politics – much like in Iraq today, where ISIS has claimed the mantle of Islam’s only defender.

"Cromwell was tolerant of Jews and Quakers, but when it came to Christians of a different hue, he was happy to see even their priests or female camp followers brutally put to the sword."

"Europe and other regions have witnessed similar turbulent moments," said Fawaz Gerges, Director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. "The formation of Europe, for example, was the result of centuries of devastating religious war."

Like Iraq, there was much more than religion at stake. Take the Thirty Years War.

Fought between 1618 and 1648 on mostly German soil, it pitted German Roman Catholics against reform-minded Lutherans and puritanical Calvinist Protestants. While at least 30 percent of Germany was left in ruins, most of the devastation occurred when that war spread throughout the rest of Europe, reigniting rivalries that were not always about religious sects or dogma.

At one point, Catholic France joined the Protestant side and sent an army to invade Catholic Spain, fearing that – as part of the growing Hapsburg Empire – Spain had become too powerful. Geopolitics trumped religion.

Around the same time, England was struggling through a civil war of its own between monarchists and rebels. Much like the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, this 30-year war started out sectarian in nature but morphed.

"In both cases, two causes divided by religion and ideology seem to have found a reason to fight, before the shock of actual bloodshed led to ever-deepening hatred," said Charles Spencer, brother of the late Princess Diana and author of upcoming "Killers of the King."

Hulton Archive via Getty Images

A painting by Philip Wouwerman shows the Battle of Nordlingen during the Thirty Years War, 6 Sept., 1634. The Imperial Catholic forces inflicted a devastating defeat on the protestant armies which led to the temporary Peace of Prague in 1635.

It did not matter that both sides believed in the same God. General Oliver Cromwell, the Protestant leader of parliament, turned torture into a fine art. King Charles 1 – a Catholic – was beheaded.

"Cromwell was tolerant of Jews and Quakers, but when it came to Christians of a different hue, he was happy to see even their priests or female camp followers brutally put to the sword," Spencer said. "Divided religion – especially when the creeds are closely intertwined – can quickly lead to the bitterest of conflicts."

That has long been the case between Sunnis and Shiites.

Both sects of Islam read the Quran and believe the Prophet Mohammed was the messenger of Allah. Both adhere to the same five tenets of Islam, from fasting during Ramadan to pledging devotion to their faith. Sunnis and Shiites both believe in Islamic law, though they have different interpretations. And while they pray at different times, their prayers are much alike.

But despite the similarities, Sunnis and Shiites have been divided for nearly 1,400 years. Their key theological difference is over who should have succeeded the Prophet Mohammed. Political rivalries – not religious beliefs – were at the root of the original schism between the two sects. Over time, these rivalries have sparked wars, as well as the current fight.

Still, the role of religion can be understated as well. The media will often describe Iraq and other modern-day conflicts as ethnic – instead of religious – strife.

The website Religious Tolerance.org points to Northern Ireland’s so-called Troubles, which kicked-off in the late 1960s between pro-Irish republicans and pro-British loyalists and claimed more than 3,500 lives, as an example of how a simplistic description can obscure religious undertones. The conflict was "largely rooted in discrimination by the Protestant majority against the Catholic minority," it said in a report.

THOPSON / AFP - Getty Images, file

A British soldier drags a Catholic protester during the "Bloody Sunday" killings of Jan. 30, 1972, when British paratroopers shot dead 13 Catholics civil rights marchers in Londonderry. Shortly after, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) declared that their immediate policy was "to kill as many British soldiers as possible."

Tensions in Northern Ireland only eased after concerted outside intervention and treaties – though still simmer decades later.

While in some cases wars of religion have been decided off the battlefield, experts and analysts fear Iraq’s current crisis will go the more violent route, with Sunni and Shiite front lines spreading across the Muslim world.

Today’s conflict is "driven more by a power struggle than a religious war," Gerges said, but "sectarianism is poisoning the veins of Arab and Muslim politics and threatening to escalate into an all-out war."

First published July 6 2014, 5:49 AM

Jim Maceda

In a career spanning 40 years, Jim Maceda has covered more than 100 countries and many conflicts, terrorist attacks and natural disasters, as well as cultural and human interest stories. He has interviewed dozens of world leaders. Over the years, Maceda has reported from the front lines of Rhodesia, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Chechnya, as well as on the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, including NATO airstrikes in Serbia and Kosovo. He is the veteran of scores of embeds in Afghanistan and Iraq, doing stories on the U.S. Army, Marines and Special Forces as well as insurgents and civilians torn apart by war. Since 1999, Maceda has been based in London.

Maceda was named NBC News' Germany correspondent in 1994, based in Frankfurt, from where he covered Eastern Europe, the Bosnian civil war and peacekeeping missions in the former Yugoslavia and Haiti. In addition, he covered major breaking news in Iran, Russia, China and the Middle East.

In 1990 Maceda became the NBC News Moscow correspondent, covering an array of stories from the Soviet Union and Russia, including the attempted coup on then-President Mikhail G. Gorbachev and the fall of the Soviet Union. In February 1992 Maceda became the first foreign TV correspondent to gain access to a secret nuclear city in Siberia, named K-26, which housed the biggest plutonium weapons factory in the former Soviet Union. Maceda also covered the civil war and the failed U.S. peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

Maceda was based in Manila from 1988 to 1990 as an NBC News Asia reporter and producer. He covered a wide range of datelines, including the Cambodian War, the Burma Revolt, the Drug War in Colombia and the Panama Invasion. In 1989 he won an Emmy for his reporting on the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing.

From 1984 to 1988, Maceda was a senior news producer in London. During that time, he was part of the first U.S. television team to cover the devastating famine in Ethiopia. In 1988 he won an Emmy for his coverage of the Palestinian Intifada, or Uprising, the same year he made his switch to on-air reporting. He also served as the acting bureau chief for NBC News in Manila in 1986, during the People Power Revolt and fall of Ferdinand Marcos.

Maceda was the deputy bureau chief and producer for NBC News in Tel Aviv from 1981 to 1983 where he covered major events including Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, its handing over of the Sinai to Egypt and the 1982 Lebanon War. While in Beirut, he produced the heralded 17-part "Lebanon Diary" series.

Maceda got his start in journalism as an associate producer for CBS News in Paris, from 1973 to 1976. As a freelance reporter and producer for French TV from 1976 to 1980, he was the first to secure a joint interview for a European TV network with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat after the Camp David Accords. In 1980 he joined NBC News' Paris Bureau as an associate producer and researcher.

Maceda has won numerous awards and citations, including an Edward R. Murrow award for his coverage of the 7/7 London terror bombings, seven Emmy nominations, four Overseas Press Club awards, and three National Headliner awards. In 1991 he received the Olive Branch Award from Columbia University for his stories on Russian nuclear proliferation. Maceda has had the distinction of reporting exclusively for two, long-running news series on "Nightly News with Brian Williams": "Putinâ€™s Russia" (2007-2008) and "Far From Home" (in Afghanistan, 2010-12).

Maceda graduated from Stanford University in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. He then pursued post-graduate studies at the Paris Sorbonne. He is married to Cindy Lilles, has a grown daughter from a previous marriage, and is the doting grandpa of three young girls.